Gaining ground in a highly established mainstream market as a new producer is never easy. Especially challenging in the construction industry with an unusual product, even if it offers great benefits in sustainability.
Who is SSH?
Today, the most used insulation material in construction is polystyrene: a highly polluting material that is flammable and disadvantageous to human health. There are alternatives—environmentally friendly insulation products—but their retail prices are high.
SSH Boards is a new straw-based insulation product that significantly reduces environmental pollution associated with building insulation and has favourable physiological effects. One sqm of SSH Board removes 8,5 kg of carbon-dioxide from the atmosphere, and it is biodegradable. The research and development of the product and manufacturing technology was carried out by SSH System; the technology is inexpensive and easily adaptable, enabling the production of high-quality insulation at many locations worldwide, reducing also the carbon footprint of transportation, creating jobs in disadvantaged regions, and utilizing local raw materials that would otherwise be classified as waste.
SSH meets Marc
The challenge of the ambitious SSH team when they joined Marc was to launch their patented and ETA-validated high-quality product to broad sales within and outside Hungary. At the start of Marc, most of their sales were based on few eco-committed individuals. Furthermore, they started to consider external investor funding but lacked courage, broad knowledge and connections to approach them with their funding needs. After participating at the base camp group trainings, SSH was selected for individual mentoring. During the mentoring sessions, the topics of target group, value proposition, competitors, value chain, sales channels, sales and marketing strategy were covered and re-invented, and a very strong sales pitch also came to life. ”This was a period of extremely intense mentoring and background work, we re-considered several of our main business elements. This helped us a lot to approach funders afterwards.” says SSH co-founder Tímea Stverteczky. “Tímea was one of the most focused and motivated mentees that we ever met. Nothing proves her extreme capacity and talent more than being able to grow such a challenging impact enterprise together with a family with her 8 kids. The ability and willingness to learn is one of the most important investor selection criteria, and Tímea proved extremely strong in that.” agree mentors Agnes Meszaros, Senior Consultant in SIMPACT and Bálint Palotai, Partner at IFUA Horváth & Partners.
Key results
Tímea Stverteczky and her son Tristan held a very well-received pitch on the year-closing re:Marc event in Vienna and won the prize for the best Marc enterprise in the whole CEE region for the first year of Marc. After this great success, they started multiple investor negotiations and secured impact investor funding. Also, thanks to the catalytic grant that the Erste Foundation offered and the Social Banking credit line that Erste Hungary opened for SSH, their business could scale further, and they will soon be ready to extend their production to Italy via delivering their own production machinery to their Italian partner, who is already successfully selling their Boards in Italy, which have been produced in Hungary so far. And the journey has just started, SSH moves from strength to strength in their first alumni year after Marc. We wish the same impressive journey to future Marc participants.
